The Black Hills State University’s men’s and women’s cross country teams competed in the RMAC Conference Championship on Saturday, Oct. 21 in Denver, Colo.

The course was difficult for the runners, as they competed at over 5000 feet in elevation. This is 1000 feet higher than the elevation BHSU practices at in Spearfish.

Because of the drastic change in elevation, the runners had a harder time breathing during the competition. Hayden Grosz,
a junior runner for the BHSU cross country team, described his lungs burning and said his breath was hard to catch once he had finished the race.

“Most of the schools in our conference are from Colorado or somewhere in the mountains, so a lot of them are a lot more used to racing at that higher elevation than we are,” Grosz said. “We only get one, maybe two days a week where we are able to kind of mimic that altitude.”

The team’s coach, Brian Medigovich, accounted for the elevation adjustment in his race plan for the athletes.

“We just have to be very conservative when we are at elevation races, so we can’t go out as fast as other teams,” Medigovich said. “We just had to play it safe because we are not a team that trains at high elevation.”

A conservative start meant that the athletes shouldn’t be pushing their hardest right at the onset of the race.

“[In the beginning,] I didn’t want them racing, per se, but the second half of the race…I told them, ‘This is where the race actually starts,’” Medigovich said.

Medigovich gave that same race plan to both the men’s and women’s teams. The women’s team, half of which is comprised freshmen, brought many new faces to the conference meet. Alexis Weiers, a freshman on the women’s team, recalled getting ready for her first collegiate championship race.

“It was a little nerve racking… but I thought, ‘Conference is obviously just another race, let’s just see how I do,’” Weiers said.
“I tried to use my nerves in a ,good way, if that makes sense… instead of worrying about doing bad, I tried to use it for adrenaline.”

High elevation and nerves weren’t the only thing taxing the cross country teams as they competed at the conference championship. Medigovich sent senior runners Timothy Brown and Lincoln Fleischman from the men’s team to compete in a separate meet in Yankton, S.D. The runners placed 1st and 3rd, respectively.

On the girls side, sophomore Katie Turpin was fighting illness the weekend of conference and wasn’t able to compete along side her teammates. Medigovich is hoping to bring together both teams as they prepare for the NCAA Division II South Central Regionals in Lubbock, Tex.

“Regionals is an important race in the sense that it’s the only round where you can qualify for nationals as a team or individually,” Medigovich said. “Conference is kind of a pre-round to regionals.”

As a national qualifier meet, regionals cranks up the intensity for both teams. While conference was an eight kilometer race for the men, regionals will be a 10 kilometer race. The women will race the same distance of six kilometers.

Despite the increase in distance, the Grosz has no plan of slowing down.

“The extra 2k just brings out the people who have Moreheart,” Grosz said. “Whoever wants it more is going to fight more in that last 2k…[It] just adds another 6-7 minutes of pain, but you kind of go the same pace either way.”

Weiers is excited for the upcoming regional competition. “I just want to race for my girls,” Weiers said. “I’m hoping we all give it our all and race for each other and see what we can do.”

Grosz also shared his excitement for the upcoming race and believes the conference experience will prove advantageous.

“This time we’re going to go down in altitude,” Grosz said. “So I think conference has made me a lot more excited to run regionals.”
Since the upcoming competition will be a decrease in elevation from what the team is used to running at, Medigovich is hoping to use the opportunity to the team’s advantage.

“We can definitely be quite a bit more aggressive,” Medigovich said. “For the guys, it is their very first 10k, so we can’t go for it in the first kilometer of the race, but we can definitely be a lot more aggressive than when we were at conference.”

Medigovich is also looking at improving the placement of both teams from last year’s regionals performances.

“Last year [the women] were 12th out of 32 teams,” said Coach Medigovich. “We are looking to see if we can improve off of that and catch another team or two… Same thing for the guys.

The guys were 12th last year and we’re trying to be top 10.” The men’s and women’s cross country teams will compete in Lubbock, Tex. on Saturday, Nov.